Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By Nitin Gairola
They call it the Holy Land and here ‘they’ doesn’t mean just one group of people, but 3 – Jews, Christians and Muslims. This Holy Land holds deep significance for people of all 3 religions and it has unfortunately been also the epicentre of geopolitics and conflict for a very long time (depending on your views, that could be anywhere from 2000 years ago to only a 100). I have no specific views on this since my first view is that I have limited knowledge of a subject like history, which quite paradoxically, keeps changing year on year. I simply can’t keep up with the pace of change so why give views that will hold no relevance a decade or two later. That way the natural world & geography is a lot more constant (and ancient) in comparison to history and that’s why it’s my area of passion. But still, let me give history a try with this little piece which is, as always, a view of the world that I actually saw with my own eyes and not any random view opinionated.
Let’s start with Bethany, one of the most significant towns for Christians. Pity I haven’t been to Jerusalem or Nazareth so far, so I can’t say much about them. Here in Bethany, the first thing the guards asked us to do was to get inside a minibus as you were not allowed to walk free around the site. It was highly guarded and while we can come in as individual tourists (and not as a part of any group tour) but they made sure we were put into a bus along with others.
Later we saw so many followers dip their feet in the holy waters of the Jordan River and of course that’s how the other name of this portion of Palestine came about in 1948 – The West Bank (i.e. the western bank of the Jordan River). I guess that makes all of the country of Jordan the East Bank? In any case, West Bank or Palestine, I could only see Israeli flags all around on the west side and Jordanian ones on the east. No other flags were to be seen and I don’t need to say any more.
This Holy Land, besides being home to all the other very significant religious sites such as Mount Nebo of Moses, is also a very ‘ancient’ land as far as ‘modern’ humans go (yes, we can have ancient and modern in the same sentence since the perception of time is a very strange thing). Jericho happens to be one of the first human settlements from around 9500 BC, at the very edge of the beginning of agriculture or the Neolithic Revolution. There are other ancient towns found in other parts of the world too especially in Turkey (Gobeklitepe and Catalhoyuk), but Jericho is right up there as well. Modern people don’t realise that ancient people were coexisting (not sure if peacefully) in Jericho long before religion came about many millennia later. And today these lands have lines either in the sand or in the minds.
Of course, when in this area one could not help but visit the touristy Dead Sea and float on one’s back, whilst casually reading a newspaper at the world’s lowest terrestrial point (a land well below mean sea level). And since we forgot to carry a newspaper, we were posing with a tourist brochure from a week prior. And because we didn’t have any fancy hotel booked here to give us a pristine beach and a ‘private access’ to the Dead Sea, we just went into a vacant part the salty sea and decided to take a dip – free of charge and completely private. The worry was that we were the only ‘living things’ for miles around the ‘Dead Sea’.
But as you can realise, our visit to these places was very uneventful and honestly a lot of tourists come here without any issues whatsoever. But there is an underlying tension in the air and an undercurrent which one can sense and that’s why you see so many white UN vehicles all around, not to mention UN refugee camps. The land situation is so complex here that I don’t even know who is encroaching on whom as a lot will depend on who you speak to. Remember that history has many versions and there is no better place to understand this ‘fact’ than at the Holy Lands of the Fertile Crescent. as
While I was at the crossroads of these 3 nations, today a lot of nations are at the crossroads. War only segregates the same people and brings misery and I hope all the world leaders will make the right choices in the days, weeks and months ahead. It’s a festive time this weekend for millions in West Asia and in every other part of the world. I pray the world has a reason to celebrate soon when the war is over and peace returns to our planet.
Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and is an extreme world traveller who has seen the natural world extensively and is often referred to as the ‘Most Travelled Indian’. He is on a quest to become the first person to travel to every major desert, forest, grassland & tundra on Earth, besides every country. Nitin has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, holds National Geographic conservation certifications and loves Bio-Geography. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. Join him @ www.instagram.com/MostTravelledIndian/
